Personal Blog

A few notes on the oil spill 2010-06-22 01:01PM

The actual cost of the BP oil spill won't be known for quite some time. But it's clear that it was big and is ruining a lot of people's fun. Unlike the Exxon Valdez in areas of reduced population, we've got oil washing up on prime beaches...

Five random thoughts 2010-02-22 11:46AM

Five random things on my brain last week.

Five random thoughts 2010-02-15 07:11PM

Five random things on my brain last week.

Five random thoughts 2010-02-07 03:38PM

Five random things on my brain last week.

The Obama vision of the space program 2010-02-02 12:30AM

One of the basic lessons that they teach in places like business schools and need to spend a lot of time hammering into your head... because it feels so unnatural... is the sunk costs fallacy. Emotionally, we hate throwing out something we spent good money on. But sunk costs are gone forever, the only thing that matters are the costs in front of you.

End of 2009... 2010-01-01 02:51PM

So far, June 24, 2007 is still looking like the date where everything changed...

The environmentalist debate is not a game of whack-a-mole 2009-12-07 01:59AM

One of my friends posted a YouTube link that I'm not going to dignify with a link. The video was a twenty year old Mr. Wizard episode that the poster claimed "disproved the Climate Change Fraud". And my friend fell for it, hook, line, and sinker...

Can't do or Won't do? 2009-11-29 07:12PM

Anything is better than another generation of kids who will grow up to ask why we are spending so much money on space exploration when we've got so many problems on Earth to fix first.

Observations since turning 30 2009-09-22 12:52AM

Some things that happened since I turned 30...

The deep-lodged problems with the BART system 2009-08-13 12:27AM

In my opinion, and I believe the facts bear me out on this, we are being swindled by our transit planners...

40 Years after Apollo 11: This brings us to now... 2009-08-02 07:15PM

So, I've already talked about how we're kind of screwed in terms of space exploration, some of the political considerations, launch costs, and some potential things to do in space. If you ask a person on the street how much money we spend on NASA, they'll give you a huge number, generally between ten and fifteen percent of the federal budget. However, the reality is that we spend far less than one percent of the budget on space exploration...

Space based solar power: Eliminating the need for power transfer 2009-08-01 08:01PM

I tend to believe that the true usefulness of exploration doesn't become apparent until much later. Consider that the Europeans came to America to find India and access one set of resources... but ended up colonizing America instead. On the other hand, to justify any big project, you need something palatable to draw people's attention. One popular reason to build space infrastructure, besides the simple need for exploration, has been solar power. Such systems usually involve the construction of large solar arrays and microwave transmitters to beam the power to earth. I would like to propose an simpler alternative...

40 Years After Apollo 11: The use of the Moon 2009-07-31 01:06AM

Helium 3 on the moon is very much like spices in the New World. If it provides a decent justification to get there, you might forgive that we're heading in a potentially wrong direction...

40 Years After Apollo 11: A few things we really don't know about space but ought to 2009-07-26 01:14AM

There are a few things about space travel and science that it bugs the heck out of me that we don't know...

40 Years after Apollo 11: The problem with blindly going on to mars 2009-07-24 11:28PM

Mars has been on the books as the next step after the moon for a long time. Some people think that our next step towards space needs to center around going to Mars. I'm going to write about why this may not be the great idea you think it is...

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